Jeopardy! Winnings Spur IBM and Scripps Research Institute Collaboration to Fight Against Malaria

LA JOLLA, CA and ARMONK, NY - 18 Nov 2011:
IBM's Watson computing system broke new ground earlier this year
when it defeated two celebrated human competitors on the Jeopardy!
game show. Now, The Scripps Research Institute is hoping to do
something equally novel but more critical to human health with part
of the prize money from that tournament: Find a cure for
drug-resistant malaria. And it's asking for the public's help.

To that end, Scripps Research and IBM (NYSE: IBM) are
encouraging anyone in the world with a personal computer to join
World Community Grid, a sort of "supercomputer of the people" that
will crunch numbers and perform simulations for "GO Fight Against
Malaria"—the project that Scripps Research and IBM have
launched at http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org.

World Community Grid is fed by spare computing power from the
nearly 2 million PCs that have been volunteered so far by 575,000
people in more than 80 countries. It gives each PC small computing
assignments to perform when the devices aren't otherwise being used
by its owners, then sends the results to scientists seeking a
faster way to cure disease, find renewable energy materials, create
clean water techniques, or develop healthier food staples.

Scripps Research, which has already used World Community Grid to
discover two promising new inhibitors of HIV to advance the
treatment of multi-drug-resistant AIDS, is now taking on the
malaria project, as well. By tapping into World Community
Grid—which turns seven years of age today—Scripps
Research scientists hope to compress 100 years of computations
normally necessary for the effort into just one year. The
scientists will use this resource to more quickly evaluate millions
of compounds that may advance the development of drugs to cure
mutant, drug-resistant strains of malaria. Data from the
experiments will then be made available to the public.

“Working on malaria started as a hobby that I advanced
during nights and weekends for a couple years, when I wasn’t
working on FightAIDS@Home,” said Alex L. Perryman, Ph.D., a
research associate in Scripps Research Professor Arthur
Olson’s lab (http://mgl.scripps.edu).
“With persistence and a lot of help from IBM and from fellow
Scripps Research scientists, we are now ready to launch the largest
computational research project ever performed against
drug-resistant malaria.”

Said Stanley S. Litow, IBM vice president of Corporate
Citizenship & Corporate Affairs, and President of IBM's
International Foundation: "Welcoming a second project on World
Community Grid from The Scripps Research Institute speaks volumes
about the Institute's caliber, and demonstrates that it shares our
commitment to make the world a better place. Curing the most
malicious strains of malaria will be a boon to so many people on
the planet, and will lead to conditions in which societies
everywhere can flourish. A project like this illustrates the way in
which we are committed in particular to places like Africa, Asia
and South America, which have emerged onto the world stage in
recent years."

There is no reliable cure or vaccine for the prevention and
treatment of all forms of malaria—particularly the
drug-resistant strains caused by Plasmodium falciparum,
which kills more people than any other parasite and is of
particular interest to the researchers.

In 2006, 247 million people became infected with malaria. Nearly
1 million deaths are caused by malaria each year and 85 percent of
those are children, who die from the disease at a rate of one every
30 seconds. In fact, malaria is the leading cause of death in
Africa for those under age five. According to the World Health
Organization, malaria is both a disease of poverty and a cause of
poverty; survivors are often subject to impaired learning, school
absences, lost work and increased economic distress. Where
prevalent, the disease can account for 40 percent of all public
health costs.

Earlier this year, scientists for seven World Community Grid
projects received half the $1 million first-place prize from a
Jeopardy! game show tournament that saw IBM's Watson computing
system compete successfully against two former human champions.
(Watson, named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, was built by a
team of IBM scientists who set out to overcome a longstanding
scientific challenge—building a computing system that rivals
a human's ability to answer questions posed in natural language
with speed, accuracy and confidence.)

The team at Scripps Research successfully proposed a project
whose design and development would benefit from the winnings.
Perryman, who describes the malaria project in more detail at
http://ibm.co/tiMRC2, added,
“Without the funding provided by some of the money that
Watson won on Jeopardy!, this Global Online Fight Against Malaria
project would not have been possible.”

In addition to Olson and Perryman, other members of the GO Fight
Against Malaria team at Scripps Research include Stefano Forli,
Ph.D., Sargis Dallakyan, Ph.D., Ruth Huey, Ph.D., Mike

The Scripps Research Institute is one of the world's largest
independent, non-profit biomedical research organizations. Scripps
Research is internationally recognized for its discoveries in
immunology, molecular and cellular biology, chemistry,
neuroscience, and vaccine development, as well as for its insights
into autoimmune, cardiovascular, and infectious diseases.
Headquartered in La Jolla, California, the institute also includes
a campus in Jupiter, Florida, where scientists focus on drug
discovery and technology development in addition to basic
biomedical science. Scripps Research currently employs about 3,000
scientists, staff, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students on
its two campuses. The institute's graduate program, which awards
Ph.D. degrees in biology and chemistry, is ranked among the top ten
such programs in the nation. For more information, see http://www.scripps.edu.

About IBM and World Community Grid

IBM has been a leader in corporate social responsibility and
corporate citizenship for 100 years. IBM puts initiatives into
place that address vital issues, such as the environment, community
economic development, education, health, literacy, language, and
culture. To learn more about IBM's corporate citizenship
initiatives, please visit: http://www.citizenibm.com

World Community Grid is one of IBM's exciting philanthropic
initiatives. Founded in 2004 and running on Berkeley Open
Infrastructre for Network Computing (BOINC) software, it provides
computational power available to scientists who might not otherwise
be able to afford the high speed computing they require for timely
research. To date, 19 research projects have been hosted on World
Community Grid, spinning off 30 peer-reviewed papers. Nine of the
projects it has hosted have generated particularly promising
results that are being further researched, or followed up with a
second phase on World Community Grid. If it were a physical
supercomputer, World Community Grid would be one of the world's 15
fastest such machines.